Decadence and grit abound in New Orleans

Lots of ways to enjoy yourself in the Big Easy, most involve food and drink

St. Louis Slim performs at the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street.

Photograph by: CHERYL GERBER

The “welcome to New Orleans” moment occurs during the taxi ride from Louis Armstrong International Airport to downtown.

The cab driver is listening to The Food Show with Tom Fitzmorris, the longest running talk radio show in New Orleans. For three hours, Monday to Friday, Fitzmorris tells listeners where he’s eaten, what he ordered and whether he liked it or not.

The show has been running since 1988 and is considered an institution in the Big Easy.

“Because food is king in New Orleans,” says the cab driver, before rattling off his own impressive and lengthy list of favourite eateries.

No. 1 on the cabbie’s list is Mr. B’s Bistro, a 320-seat Creole restaurant in the city’s French Quarter.

These big plump Gulf shrimp served with the head on in a peppery butter sauce are a special kind of delicious. But the peel-and-eat meal is sloppy business. Despite being outfitted in what feels like a floor to ceiling bib, you’ll probably still fling juice and shrimp shell shrapnel on yourself. Alert diners around you that they too should expect friendly fire. Collateral damage is a sad but sure outcome when you order the shrimp here.

Finish the meal and forget about your upcoming drying cleaning bill by indulging in their hot buttered pecan pie ($7).

Of course one cannot live, or vacation, on food alone. Liquid, the kind made of booze, is also a necessity. And just your luck, friend — you are in New Orleans.

There are two kinds of people: those who love Bourbon Street; and those who pretend to hate Bourbon Street.

It’s an easy and sleazy target for derision. It’s lined with strip joints and bars selling $2 Miller Lites while bikini girls ride a mechanical bull. But if you can see past the raunch, there is still a unique heart that beats beneath Bourbon. It may be gritty but the people here like it that way.

“New Orleans is 100-per-cent authentic,” says Sandie McNamara, a longtime New Orleans resident and a marketing director for Dickie Brennan & Co. a restaurant management group. “When people go to Disneyland or Vegas they get a very clean and controlled environment. Here it is very different. There is authentic history and authentic life.”

There is still good jazz being played on Bourbon at Fritzel’s European Jazz Pub (733 Bourbon St.).

The drink prices are set higher than just about anywhere else on the strip which keeps the rowdy riff-raff away.

Cramped and hot, Fritzel’s is everything you want a jazz club to be. There is a upright piano in the back and enough room for a drummer, a standup bass and couple of horns to play traditional New Orleans jazz.

The locals prefer the nightlife on Frenchmen Street where jazz music plays nightly at joints like the Spotted Cat (623 Frenchmen St.) where young people, who wouldn’t look out of place at an indie rock show, dance and tap toes to old fashion jazz played marvelously by a crew of musicians barely in their 20s.

It’s also probably the first place you’ll spot someone drinking a craft beer. Abita, a small brewery located 30 miles north of New Orleans, seems to be the beer of choice on Frenchmen.

Of course, no one comes to New Orleans for the suds. This is a cocktail town. And the best place to sip a Gin Fizz, Sazerac or Pimms Cup is back in the French Quarter at the Carousel Bar (214 Royal St.).

Installed in 1949, the revolving merry-go-round bar in the historic Hotel Monteleone is one of New Orleans’ “must-see” attractions. Unfortunately, it’s always busy. And visitors sometimes wait hours drinking the day/night away at a table before being able to belly-up to carousel.

Luckily, the Loa Bar back at the International House boutique hotel (221 Camp St.) serves the best cocktails in town without the overflowing crowd.

Located just a couple blocks outside of the French Quarter, Loa Bar serves fresh and inventive twists on traditional New Orleans cocktails using fresh squeezed juices and original bitters. Try the La La Louisiane, a complex concoction of Cynar, Absinthe, Carpano Antica, Rittenhouse rye, and chicory-plantain bitters, garnished with fine, dark chocolate. A few of these and this bar will spin as well.

If you’re still up late and you want to grab something to eat, the wee small hours are the best time to hit usually packed Café Du Monde (1862 Decatur St.), a 150-year-old landmark, for beignets ($1.59). An order gets you three of New Orleans’ version of a doughnut. Grab some napkins for your shirt collar and some more for you lap to avoid being caked by the mountain of icing sugar served on top of the hot beignets. Tip: if you do get the covered in sugar, brush it off with dry napkin; a wet napkin will create a gluey mess.

After a night over-indulging and carousing the streets of New Orleans, the Palace Café (605 Canal St.) will have you feeling right again the next morning. Their Sunday jazz brunch is the best of the city. Treat yourself to a decadent start to the day by ordering a Bourbon Milk Punch ($6) and the New Orleans Pain Perdu served with pecan-praline sauce, berries and andouille sausage ($15) while a roving jazz trio provides a tableside concert.

For an attraction not involving food or drink (they actually have some) visit the massive National Second World War Museum. The Smithsonian-affiliated complex features an impressive collection of war machines including a Higgins boat, the New Orleans-built landing craft that moved Allied troops onto the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

For a different kind of boat trip, Grayline Tours (800-233-2628) will bus you to Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, a 25-minute trip, for a swamp boat ride through alligator infested bayous and canals.

Alligators, some as long as eight feet, glide through the water on all sides of the boat. A live baby gator, his jaws taped shut for your safety, is passed around the boat for examination.

Before the swamp became a preservation area, swamp boat skipper Jason Beasley used to feed the gators marshmallows. The reptiles remember and still come to the sound of his voice.

“If it wasn’t for YouTube I‘d probably still be feeding them,” he says.

Instead, the alligators feed us. Their meat is widely available in the restaurants of New Orleans.

At the meat-friendly Cochon (930 Tchoupitoulas Street), fried alligator with chili garlic mayonnaise ($10) is served as an appetizer. It’s delicious.

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